Shifting symbols

Director Bill Condon undercuts the premise of Louise Roug’s article (“An Intimate Shift on the Big Screen,” Nov. 7) on Hollywood’s current interest in male bisexuality by using Marlon Brando as a past symbol of masculinity. He is perhaps unaware that in the mid-’50s Brando, Montgomery Clift and James Dean came under fire for projecting an underlying feminine sensitivity not seen in traditional he-men like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas or even Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda, who frequently played “sensitive” but otherwise strongly masculine men.

Of course some of the negative reaction to Brando, Clift and Dean was due to jealousy and envy, and the fact that these actors were known to have a gay following and rumors about their sexuality didn’t help the sullying of their images.

Rick Mitchell

Los Angeles